Review: Peter Thiel's The Straussian Moment

Usually, when we think of the Apocalypse the first image that comes to mind is one of mass destruction. However, the meaning of the word “Apocalypse” is simply Revelation. (Sure, a Revelation of mass destruction and heathen-smiting, but still) In Peter Thiel’s The Straussian Moment, the revelation, courtesy of September 11, 2001, is that of a long-forgotten truth about human nature: People Be Crazy. There’s also a deeper meaning that goes all the way back to the violent birth of human civilization as conceived by literary theorist René Girard, but that’s pretty much it.

I’ve read this four times to better understand the complex nature of… actually, it was because I kept dozing off. Really, this is a great read for insomniacs. Anyway, after ascertaining that September 11 completely turned the western-centric conception of the modern world upside down, Thiel spends 26 pages (which felt more like 126 pages) dissing the Enlightenment, Locke, Hobbes, and Marxists and Capitalists’ belief of an economically driven human nature, and then presenting possible philosophical alternatives to replace their now obsolete views. As you can imagine, the Apocalypse and Christianity are mentioned more than once and it’s clear that’s what he finds more important, even if the study of human nature isn’t presented as exclusive to religious thinkers.

So, in the olden days, thinkers of various faiths and beliefs had no problem discussing serious and important issues, like human nature and religion. People also believed in their duty to a higher cause, be it religious or political, and were willing to sacrifice themselves for it. However, after years of killing each other over that, Europeans decided it was better to agree to disagree on those divisive issues and any subjects that might cause conflict were progressively abandoned. What was once considered Universal slowly became Relative and Private. The Enlightenment, with its love of rationality, stopped trying to define human nature (and therefore forgot people’s ability to be irrational). Philosophers like Locke and Hobbes simplified human motivation and substituted sacrifice and duty with self-preservation. Locke believed human nature was unknowable. He also seemed to think the world had the ability to self-regulate so that greedy unscrupulous criminal assholes wouldn’t be able to greatly profit from their greedy unscrupulous criminal assholery. In terms of religion, Locke found new, more lax meanings in the teachings of Jesus, who had concealed their true message because of the threat of Rome. According to Thiel, this is bad and awfully presumptuous of Locke. Also according to Thiel, Locke had a great influence in the Founding Fathers’ conception of America, which apparently explains a lot.

With the hegemony of Capitalism, Humanity’s motivation was further cemented as straightforward and one hundred percent rational: every problem in the world is caused by poverty and the solution is to give money. You know, to keep the peasants happy and not go the way of the French aristocracy in the 18th century. Of course, like Thiel notes, much of the money funnelled to developing countries ended up increasing the personal fortunes of various dictators instead of improving the lives of the general population. Still, money remained the focus whenever people thought about what was wrong with the world and what threats might arise. However, much to everyone’s shock, it wasn’t underpaid Tibetan yak herders who went bananas and attacked the United States. (Though, frankly, I think people might’ve been even more shocked if it had been Tibetan yak herders) (By the way, “Tibetan yak herders” has joined “obloquy” in the list of things I’ll be looking for an excuse to use in the future) And it wasn’t about money. The Crusades were back, and this time, the West was on the receiving end of it. All the ways the modern world had created to maintain peace were useless against this new enemy. After all, international diplomacy isn’t going to work on suicide bombers. Like House Tyrell found out, you can’t negotiate with Crazy.

So, given that Locke and the Enlightenment were obviously wrong, who should we turn to? Thiel starts with Carl Schmitt, who viewed people as being in a constant state of opposition to each other, an opposition that’s played out in the field of politics. The sources of conflict are those serious matters that Locke and the Enlightenment chose to push aside: the knowledge of human nature and religion. According to Schmitt, people will always have enemies and if they think they don’t it’s because they’re suicidal idiots who will end up like the naïve nobility that idealized the lower classes and ended up overthrown by them. Also, a global utopia where everyone gets along is clearly not real and can only be the work of the Antichrist and is the prelude to the Apocalypse. Hmm, I’m guessing Schmitt’s talk of the Antichrist was metaphorical. I mean, it had to be metaphorical, right? He was pretty aggressive and the type to want to fight fire with fire. Thiel says that’s a bit much and that people must be careful, or they might become like their enemies. Which is funny coming from someone who in the beginning mentions the “the fundamentalist civil rights mania of the American Civil Liberties Union (UCLA)” as having become an “unviable anachronism”. I don’t know if Thiel ever watched 24, but I have the sneaking suspicion he’d love that episode in Season 4 where Marwan, the terrorist, calls “Amnesty Global” to stop Jack Bauer from torturing the truth out of one of his minions. Not so fun fact: Carl Schmitt was an active member of the Nazi party until he was accused of just pretending to be a virulent anti-Semite who encouraged book burning. He was also on good terms with Leo Strauss.

Next up is Strauss himself. Strauss believed there’s a universal truth hidden across the works of History’s greatest thinkers and if you know how to decode those works’ esoteric meaning you’ll know the answer to all those big questions that the Enlightenment unceremoniously pushed aside. Of course, those great thinkers had to be sneaky about it because they lived in ignorant, violent times and the truth might get them executed by the… Hey, wait a minute, isn’t that what Locke said about Jesus? Why was Locke wrong and Strauss right? Seriously, the entirety of the Straussian thinking (at least as described by Thiel) seems to revolve around these hidden meanings that are only accessible to the select few brilliant enough to understand them. This sounds like a highbrow version of Dan Brown. It’s also what gave us SanSan and hundreds of threads about Ashara Dayne. Anyway, Strauss’s own work is filled with esoteric meaning. He was really into hiding stuff, including all the nastiness that might eventually become necessary to win a war, even as he reminded people of some of the United States’ original sins (you know, like the fact that there were people already living there). Weirdly, for all his theorizing about things not being as they seem, Strauss also said that another way for those great thinkers to remain safe was to get others to say their words for them, which is why many brilliant people throughout History seemed anything but. Yeah, what? Given Thiel’s own occasional moronic choices, I’m surprised he decided to include this particular bit of Straussian theory. Thiel thinks Strauss may have revealed a little too much and that those nasty truths about the US will make people less likely to want to defend it even when their own survival is at stake. Another problem are those pesky checks and balances that limit American politicians’ freedom of action. (Ah, yes, the good old days when a single person had the power to send a whole nation to war and get thousands killed without needing the approval of a bunch of people who derive their authority from the ignorant masses! We all miss those, don’t we?) Can you guess Thiel’s opinion of the UN? Spoiler Alert, it’s not a good one: “the United Nations, filled with interminable and inconclusive parliamentary debates that resemble Shakespearean tales told by idiots”. Luckily, extra-judicial covert operations are a thing and without them the US and the West wouldn’t have survived and thrived. Instead of the risible UN, Thiel points to Echelon as the best means to achieve global peace. Thiel clearly likes Strauss (probably because he makes him feel all special and brilliant for being able to decipher his esoteric writings), but Straussianism isn’t the key to understanding what the hell is going on (which is weird because his name is in the title). No, even though Strauss did mention the murder present in most foundational myths, it was literary theorist René Girard who really got it, because for him civilization itself was founded on murder and violence. “René Girard: The End of the City of Man” is the most engaging part of this essay. Thiel loves all this scapegoat and mimesis stuff, and it shows.

According to Girard, the evolution of Humanity happened through imitation. Mimesis makes people copy each other, leading them to wanting the same things, which in turn generates conflict. Basically, it’s why we have wars and LuLaRoe. The origin of human civilization lies in that first mimetic conflict. While the political philosophers of the Enlightenment envisioned the founding of human civilization as a peaceful act of mutual understanding, Girard presented a much darker view. At some point in that primordial war, the warring factions ended up turning on one person, who became a convenient culprit, aka The Scapegoat, and allowed everyone to just move on without having to feel guilty about all the shit they had done. This act of unjustified violence was later legitimized through Myth and re-enacted in rituals of sacrifice in ancient societies which served as an outlet and helped maintain the peace in the community. Since no one in the West is going around sending goats into the desert or whipping ugly people with fig branches anymore, that violence has lost its boundaries. According to Thiel, these founding myths also served to establish which violence was considered legitimate. Now, because everyone knows how fucked up their history is, the limits of what is allowed keep getting fuzzier. This is the Revelation of Girard (and Thiel): mimetic violence as an integral part of the foundation of human civilization… and also its DOOM. There’s nothing stopping this mimetic violence from spreading and this time people won’t be using stones, but weapons capable of generating apocalyptic levels of destruction. So, basically, people will be aping each other to death? That’s embarrassing.

Oh, but don’t panic, there’s still hope. Sort of. Like I wrote earlier, Thiel ends this essay giving advice to Christian politicians, whom he tells to choose peace whenever possible. He also reminds us to “never forget that one day all will be revealed, that all misjustices will be exposed, and that those who perpetrated them will be held to account”. He’s talking about the biblical Apocalypse, isn’t he? You know, with the Second Coming, the Four Horsemen, the Antichrist, and God’s Final Judgement? Since this was written in 2007, and Against Edenism, which I reviewed in an earlier post, was written in 2015, I’m guessing he changed his mind about this stuff. Or maybe he went all Straussian and started hiding the weirdness better.

Disclaimer: I don’t have a degree in philosophy, and I’ve only read some excerpts of Locke, Hobbes, and Marx, so this is just my interpretation of Thiel’s interpretation of everyone’s works. I’m only doing this for the snark, really.

By Danforth